What
will come next in music? I mean taking the broad view, you had the advent of the LP from shorter vinyl formats, and of course stereo recordings (but quad not catching on), cassettes (and of course dead dead dead 8-track), the CD (along with its ill-fated cousin, DAT), MD, which might have had more success if it weren't for the quick follow-on development of mp3, of course, and the whole file approach, along with its attendant online download systems...
Except for degree-type improvements -- adding graphic and video, improving the quality of the sound in compressed files, downsizing the players (although you can't get much smaller than that new Shuffle!), enhancing the programming to interface with the music, etc -- what else can be done?
I can only think of implants.
Seriously, I was thinking implants are an inevitable step when seeing yet another person with one of those Borg-like Bluetooth earpieces for cell phones the other day (or just the ubiquitous nature of cell phones and Blackberry-type things and all that). Maybe
Star Trek was again prophetic:
Of course a lot of people won't want to consider such a thing, but some will, and will do it -- they'll pierce all sorts of parts of their body and get all sorts of plastic surgery for all sorts of reasons, and this seems not so different -- and once some do, more will, of course... And of course it will be designed to be innocuous and unthreatening, the opposite of the Borg...
Steve